Traffic Shaping a T1 with a managed switch, latency issue, help.

Hey all, trying to setup a traffic shaper on a home network and having trouble finding the right product.

I have a T1 with a cisco router managed by the telephone company. I have several computers connected to the T1 that often saturate the connection. Problem is, I have a wireless router on one port and a latency sensitive application on a computer on the other port. When the wireless saturates the connection, my latency jumps from 34ms to 3000ms on the latency sensitive computer.

I thought QoS port prioritization on a newly purchased "Netgear ProSafe Plus Switch, 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet (GS108E)" would fix this issue simply, but I was wrong. Apparently the aforementioned prioritization only applies to swamped switch traffic and not saturated Internet up/down thru the T1(on this switch, anyway).

So, I tried using a bandwidth limiter by port on the same switch, and limited the wireless connection to 1mbps, leaving 0.54mbps for my latency sensitive application, and while this did limit the bandwidth to the aforementioned 1mbps on the Cisco wireless router, the latency sensitive computer still have terrible latency, and was even dropping packets and disconnecting at that point. I updated the firmware on the switch to no avail.

I am sending this switch back, it isn't want I need, and I'm convinced it cannot be configured to work like I need it to.

I need something that will intelligently manage INTERNET bandwidth in real time to make sure that any requests for internet bandwidth from a certain port are given unhindered access to the full spectrum of bandwidth, while maintaining low latency on the latency dependent program. I would also like this to be easy to setup and affordable. I'm not sure if there is an affordable product on the market that can meet these requirements.

Also, any ideas on why limiting bandwidth on one port would still produce high latency on the other port(should be .54mbps left over which is more than enough to ping google.com and give low latency results, but this may not be how latency works on a T1, I'm unsure).

Finally, I would like to know if there is no solid option, is there a product that will limit internet bandwidth to one port or IP without causing high latency on the latency sensitive computer.

What I need is for someone to be downloading a large file over the wireless router, but a VOIP phone connected thru another port on a swtich, to still be able to operate at full unhindered capacity on the other, over a T1, with latency that would appear as if the connection was not in use. Any suggestions?

I'd go with a Cisco switch, maybe a 3560 or something. It should be able to handle QoS, and traffic shaping pretty good. If you are looking for affordable, check out eBay or a refurb unit. Lots of people out there selling them...make sure to get a good warranty out of them, at least a year or two.

can't say what the problem was on the netgear end, but could be high cpu utilization on the port limiting that affected the entire switch, or something of the like.

for traffic priority you can use a cisco switch behindyour T1 router..if you need configs for specific traffic to precedence over other traffic I can help with it.

0

JoshBPAuthor Commented: 2013-01-23

Appreciate the responses guys, found an 8 port 3650 for aroundd 260 bucks on Ebay, but that is a little outside of my price range. Any software that could be added to the actual computers using the bandwidth that can give me a lot of options to limit it? Preferrably I would like to install it on one particular laptop that is using the majority of bandwidth. Perhaps limiting its download capabilities between the hours of 9am to 5pm m-f, something grainular like that. Approaching this from the software end could save me a tidy sum and an acceptable resolution to the issue. I didn't mention this earlier, but this is residential use, so the T1 costs these folks enough already they are trying to cut corners on unnecessary hardware if possible.

WatchGuard acquires Percipient Networks to extend protection to the DNS layer, further increasing the value of Total Security Suite. Learn more about what this means for you and how you can improve your security with WatchGuard today!

So you're saying that there is no solid client based traffic shaping software available? Sorry to drag this out, and I appreciate the answers given so far, but I need to delve a little deeper into this issue to find the best solution.

Yep, this is the best way to do this. Cost is a bit prohibitive. Alternately, there are many, cheaper applications capable of bandwidth shaping on single clients(or multiple clients if installed on a router server), but none of which do what is requested in the original question. At the time of this writing, a used 8 port switch costs about 250 dollars. it must be a layer 3 switch to properly perform traffic shaping.

0

Featured Post

Evaluating a UTM appliance and vendor can prove to be an overwhelming exercise. How can you make sure that you're getting the security that your organization needs without breaking the bank? Check out our UTM Buyer's Guide for more information on what you should be looking for!